Hardware

"Hardware," a British film, is "The Terminator" by way of "Mad Max," with lots of "Alien," "Blade Runner," "1984," "The Beast with Five Fingers," "The Wizard of Oz" — you name it! — thrown in for good measure. Or bad.

Set in the ever-popular post-apocalyptic future, "a weird zone-tripper" finds pieces of a robot buried in the desert. He sells them to Mo — short for Moses — who in turn gives them as a present to his girlfriend Jill.

Jill is a junk sculptor and Mo figures she can use them in her ongoing project. She does, unaware that the robot — dubbed "Mark 13" — is programmed to rebuild itself and exterminate humans so that "no flesh shall be saved," a quoted phrase from the 13th chapter of Mark in the Bible.

Naturally, the robot chases Jill and several others all around her apartment dispatching those he can in the goriest possible manner.

Notwithstanding its pretentious biblical overtones and cautionary "messages" about environmental and population control, "Hardware" is really just an excuse for more blood 'n' guts being splattered on the screen with two particularly gruesome scenes of violence toward the end.

Writer-director Richard Stanley, whose first feature this is, goes for a music video look that can best be described as chaotic clutter, with a soundtrack that has to be the loudest headache-inducing collection of noise in recent film history.

His characters are sullen or repulsive and even his heroes leave much to be desired, completely lacking any screen warmth.

All in all it's quite an annoying film. Especially after you've paid $5.50 to see it.

"Hardware" is rated R for extreme violence, sex, nudity, profanity, drugs and vulgarity.